SRP Paper#15: Part 2

- Dale R. Broadhurst's SPALDING RESEARCH PROJECT -

The Book and the Manuscript

An Introduction to Book of Mormon Source Criticism

by Dale R. Broadhurst

Independent Media Project Class Presentation Report
ED-376 ( Media and Message in Christian Education)

February 27, 1980
(revised April 2, 1980)

- Part 2 -

Return to Part One: Pages 1 - 7

Return to: SRP Paper 15: Introduction

The record of Mormon, with additions by his son, Moroni, was said to have been buried in what is now New York state in about 421 CE.

The person who buried the record, Moroni the son of Mormon, claimed to be last survivor of the fair-skinned, civilized people who had kept sacred records from the time of Nephi forward. These people were exterminated in the tremendous battles of Moroni's day.

Page 09

A number of Joseph's neighbors claimed to have seen the Nephite record. Either directly or in visions, they saw what looked like page-sized plates of gold.

Joseph's report was that there were several sets of plates, including those he used in his book: the "small plates of Nephi" and the larger "plates of Mormon" and his son, Moroni.

Page 10

Here we see a diagram of the two sets of plates, with the small plates of Nephi stacked atop the others.

The names of the book divisions of the Book of Mormon have been added for reference.

There are 15 divisions, beginning with First Nephi and continuing down to the Book of Moroni.

Page 11

The story begins in the book of First Nephi. A small group of Israelites leave Jerusalem just before the fall of Judah in 587 BCE.

With divine assistance, the patriarch Lehi, his son Nephi, and the others sail for an unknown land.

After a perilous voyage through a terrible storm they arrive at last, in safety, in the ancient Americas.

Page 12

These escaped Israelites multiply and produce a great civilization. In the process they become split into two distinct peoples -- the lighter-skinned Nephites and the darker, less civilized Lamanites.

While the Nephites mostly keep their ancestral religion and lifestyle, the hostile Lamanites forsake their heritage and adopt a more primitive way of life.

Following the Book of Mormon story, the Lamanites appear to be the ancestors of at least some of the American Indian tribes.

Page 13

In 1831 the people who accepted the Book of Mormon as true followed Joseph, their latter day prophet from New York to the region around Kirtland, Ohio.

The "Mormonites" were not well received by all their Ohio neighbors. Within a couple of years Eber D. Howe, a local newspaper editor, published a book attacking these people, their prophet, and their "gold bible."

Howe charged that a former preacher named Solomon Spalding, who had once lived in nearby Conneaut, was the real author of the Book of Mormon -- that it was a fictional history, reworked into fake scripture.

Page 14

Solomon Spalding never published his fictional story about the ancient Americans, but some of his neighbors around Conneaut had read the account or had heard it read.

No one knows for sure how many such stories Spalding wrote, but one of them still survives in manuscript form and is kept in the archives of Oberlin College in northern Ohio.

This "Oberlin Spalding manuscript" was mentioned by Howe in his book and by some of Spalding's old associates. These people did not claim that this particular story was the same as the Book of Mormon.

Page 15

The Oberlin MS tells the story of a small number of people leave Rome in the time of Constantine. With divine assistance, they and their leader, Fabius, sail to a far off land.

After a perilous voyage through a terrible storm they arrive at last, in safety, in the ancient Americas.

Here they meet a civilized, light-skinned people. Like the Book of Mormon's Nephites, the Sciotans and rival Kentucks are later exterminated in great battles and forgotten. Only their "mound-builder" earthworks and relics remained in Spalding's day.

Go to Part Three: Pages 16 - 22

Return to: SRP Paper 15: Introduction